Bacteriophages and phage-inspired nanocarriers for targeted delivery of therapeutic cargos

Abstract

The main goal of drug delivery systems is to target therapeutic cargoes to desired cells and to ensure their efficient uptake. Recently a number of studies have focused on designing bio-inspired nanocarriers, such as bacteriophages, and synthetic carriers based on the bacteriophage structure Bacteriophages are viruses that specifically recognize their bacterial hosts. They can replicate only inside their host cell and can act as natural gene carriers. Each type of phage has a particular shape, a different capacity for loading cargo, a specific production time, and their own mechanisms of supramolecular assembly, that have enabled them to act as tunable carriers. New phage-based technologies have led to the construction of different peptide libraries, and recognition abilities provided by novel targeting ligands. Phage hybridization with non-organic compounds introduces new properties to phages and could be a suitable strategy for construction of bio-inorganic carriers. In this review we try to cover the major phage species that have been used in drug and gene delivery systems, and the biological application of phages as novel targeting ligands and targeted therapeutics.

Smart Nanostructures for Cargo Delivery: Uncaging and Activating by Light

“…16,17 In DDSs, various basic materials can be incorporated in the design of nanocarriers such as albumin, 18 nanocarbons (e.g., carbon nanotubes (CNT), reduced graphene oxide (reduced GO), and fluorescent carbon NPs), 19–21 virus and bacteriophage-based NPs, 22,23 stimuli-responsive polymer moieties, 24–29 metal NPs, 30 and semiconductor NPs. 31 …”

Albumin nanostructures as advanced drug delivery systems

“…The discovery of innovative approaches for the selective delivery of therapeutic biomolecules (drugs, proteins, and genes) used for the treatment of disease has captured the interest of both experimental investigations and literature reviews [1–4]. In recent years, the field of targeted delivery systems has expanded to include a variety of nanoparticles (NPs) that have become a very important technology for drug carriers [5–8].…”

Phage‐Enabled Nanomedicine: From Probes to Therapeutics in Precision Medicine

“…The variants and techniques in phage library display have already been widely reviewed. [7g, 20, 21, 73] For example, a phage system using M13 phages makes use of the single copy of gene III in the phage genome by ligating the sequence for a fusion peptide to pIII. Consequently, every copy of pIII in the assembled phages will then display the corresponding fusion protein.…”

“…[3,6] Each family is sorted according to the structure of the capsids encompassing their genomes, the chemical and structural composition of their genomes (linear, circular, double or single-stranded, DNA or RNA), and the mechanism of mRNA production. [3] In terms of making use of phage biology, there are several reviews encompassing phage display [7] and bacterial biosensing. [8] Phage display is useful for finding peptide ligands that can specifically bind to disease-associated receptors and microenvironments.…”